Last Half Hour of Miracles!

October 29, 2018

This week was pretty good here in Winnipeg. We met a nice lady from China named Bella. We had a lesson with her and it was pretty apparent to us that we knocked on her door at just the time she needed us so that was really cool! We were also finding one night and this guy was like.. ``We are not interested.. we are athesists..`` Sister Utsch and I just looked at eachother and sort of laughed because who even knows what an athesist is. 

We got to go on exchanges with the St. James sisters this week!! They are in a tri-pan so it was a bit crazy trying to get everything figured out but it was good! I got to spend some time with Sister Nauna again and that was super fun! She is such an amazing missionary and has made such an impact on my life. All of the sisters are! 

We did a lot of finding this week trying to build up our teaching pool. We werent having a lot of success until right at the end of the week! On saturday we were praying all day that we would find someone we could set a baptismal date with that day so that our district could reach the goal we had set for the month. Our district leader called us that morning and said, ``I am calling it, you are going to find a family of four today.`` We didnt think much of it but just kept praying we would find someone and set a date with them. It got to be about 8:30 at night and we still hadnt found anyone. We were trying to figure out where we needed to go to find this person and so I started driving and just picked a random street. We got out of the car and the first door we knocked on they let us in! And it was a family of FOUR!!! They moved here from Iraq and were super nice. They fed us this cake stuff and juice and coke too. Hahah, we didnt have much time to teach them but they were very willing to let us come back. They said, ``Our home is your home.`` So that was a really cool miracle!
Then the next day, which was yesterday. We had more time to find in the evening. We decided to go to these townhome type places and we decided to try doing a survey with just 10 questions that relate back to our church with people. The first guy said no, the next girl did the survey but didnt want us to come in to share more, the next house was a member who wanted nothing to do with the church, and then we found Grace. She moved here from Congo with her family and it just a ball of energy! She did the survey and then said we could come back next week because she was busy right then. But she kept talking to us for a bit as we were standing on her doorstep. She started teaching us words in french and was really warming up to us. Eventually she was like, ``hey you are cold, just come in. But only for 5 min.`` We ended up staying for longer than 5 minutes and she showed us all of her favorite gospel songs. It was quite funny. We didnt get too many words in because she was just singing and dancing for us but she also said we could come back so we are looking forward to teaching her and her family! 

I was reading the ensign this week and found this quote that I really loved, by Elder Lawrence E. Corbridge

``The Lord`s way is not hard. Life is hard, not the gospel... Life is hard for all of us, but life is also simple. We have only two choices. We can either follow the Lord and be endowed with His power and peace, light, strength, knowledge, confidence, love and joy, or we can go some other way, whatever other way, and go it alone-- without His support, without His power, without guidance, in darkness, turmoil, doubt, grief, and despair. And I ask, which way is easier?

I hope you will all continue to pick the easier way:) Love you and hope you have a great week!! 

Love, Sister Godderidge

Lots of pictures again this week! 

Exchanges, service, zone conference from a few weeks ago, etc.

Transfer Week

October 22, 2018

Hey family and friends! This week was a pretty crazy week with transfers and everything. I still cannot believe my time in the tripan is over! I am excited for what the new transfer has to bring though. Sister Utsch, my new companion is awesome! She is from Nebraska! She has been on her mission for about 7 months now and she was actually trained in Warroad and stayed there for 6 months just like me! We have been reminiscing and sharing stories about the people and things there the past few days so that has been fun! She came out with Sister Jackson who is the sister I trained a few transfers ago!! She is great and I think we will work well together! We also have two more sets of sisters in our stewardship so we will get to go on more exchanges which will definitely keep us busy!! I am excited!

Some fun stories of the week..

Sister Nauna and I were together for a few hours this week while sister gatten was in a new trainers meeting. We took some stuff to the apartment she will be living in because they are opening the area. As we were driving down the road all of the sudden Sister Nauna yells, "STOP THE CAR!!!" I was a little freaked out but didnt panic too much. Up ahead there was a car up in flames. I will have to send the picture next week because I dont have it but that was kind of crazy! Sister Nauna was pretty concerned. 

We stopped by a former person in our area this past week and found out that she has been having some kidney failure and things have been crazy the past few months. We offered to rake her leave and she was very appreciate. After a little bit her and her husband came outside thanking us and they invited us to come back to share a message with them! It was cool to see how the service softened their hearts! 

We also had stake conference this past weekend and that was really good. We talked a lot about the gathering of israel and the temple! Those seem to be very common themes lately. 

We also had a District dinner at President and Sister Hitchcocks last monday! They are the greatest people! Our district leader was given a turkey so he asked Sister Hitchcock if she could make it for us. It was a very good Thanksgiving dinner!! 

Another elder in our district got a package from his mom with some halloween costumes so we dressed up before Sister Nauna left our district! 

I cant really remember anything else that happened this week but I will send some pictures!!

Love, Sister Godderidge

Sister Utsch! We just took this picture like 3 minutes ago because we realized we hadnt take any yet 

Sister Nauna and I

Pday activity last week! It was snowing but we still played frisbee!

Our halloween costumes. The waverley elders got left out and didnt get costumes. 

They spelled Jesus wrong on our area book map haha

These are the two tallest sisters in the mission! The one on the left just got here and she is a foot taller than me haha

WONDERFUL WEEK

October 15, 2018

What a week!! There is so much to write about so I will warn you that this may be long. If you dont read it that is okay! 

First off we went on a couple more mini exchanges with the sisters in our stewardship. That was pretty crazy, we were just running around all day but it was lots of fun!! We got to see how things were going with the new training we have received and such! I will send lots of pictures!

We also raked leaves a few times this week for people. We bought rakes a couple weeks ago and kind of forgot about them so we finally got to put them to use! We helped out one of our potential friends and she gave us hot chocolate afterwards. We also helped a member! I will send a pic with the member! Sister Nauna was at the mission office that day so she wasnt with us. 

We also had a really neat opportunity to have Elder Gifford Nielson and his wife visit our mission this week. They are pretty amazing people! On Wednesday night, half of the Mission's MLC (the ones in Winnipeg) got to go to the Mission Home where the Hitchocks live and have supper and then a little meeting with them where we discussed some of the needs of the mission. It was really cool! Also Sister Gatten and I got "chosen" to sit at the dinner table with the Hitchcocks and the Nielsons. I was just thinking how cool it was the whole time! Such a great opportunity! 

The next day we had a combined zone conference with both zones in Winnipeg and the Nielsons and Hitchcocks trained on lots of great things! We learned so much and I am so excited to apply it all. We talked about the story of Ammon and King Lamoni and about how Ammon was an amazing missionary and what we can learn from his example. We also talked about how to teach repentance more effectively. We trained a little bit again on working with members! And also talked about how we can do hard things!! Something Elder Nielson said both days really stuck out to me. "The more challenging the obstacle, the more profound the miracle." I just loved that! It makes me really motivated and excited to work through challenges! He also urged us to study the Book of Mormon and Preach my Gospel EVERY SINGLE DAY!!! They are the game plans of missionary work!! 

Probably the best part of the week was Alice's baptism on Saturday!!! We were a bit stressed trying to make sure everything went well and it all worked out great!! We filled up the font on Saturday morning but then had to wait a bit to start because our Bishop forgot haha. So that made the water really really cold and Alice did not like that but she was a trooper! Sunday was also a bit stressful because on Saturday night we got a call asking us to teach both Gospel Principles and Relief Society. So every hour we had something to worry about. But it all worked out! Our ward mission leader Brother Moore speaks mandarin so he was able to confirm Alice in mandarin so she could understand. That was really really cool!! Such a wonderful weekend! 

We also had some sad news that the Regina temple president, President Paulson passed away on Friday. He is from Utah and was the mission president here a few years ago and then was called back to be the temple president. Him and his wife only had one week left of their service and then they were headed back to Utah. They lived in the ward I served in in Regina so they had us over for supper a couple times. He taught me a lot!! It just broke my heart when I heard the news! So keep the Paulson family in your prayers this week. 

Last news of the week is TRANSFERS!! I can't believe it is already time again!! It just keeps going faster and faster. Someone told us the other day.. "life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes." haha That is like anything! The closer you get to the end of something you try to savor every last bit. We are trying to savor every last bit of our time as companions. It has been such a great learning opportunity! I have grown a lot these past few months. I am excited for what's to come as well!
I will be staying in the Waverley Ward another transfer and getting a new companion. Her name is Sister Utsch. I dont know much about her but she seems to be great so I am excited. Sister Gatten is going to be training a new sister for her last transfer in the ward right next to ours! She will still be in my district so she wont be far! Sister Nauna will be in another tripan in the city that is also not too far away so I will still get to see her every week. They are splitting us up but not really!! I will still get to go on exchanges with them next transfer!! So we are all excited about that. 

Wo ai ni!!! Have a good week!! Enjoy all the pictures! There are a lot this week!

Love, Sister Godderidge

The senior sisters in the office. I love them!!!!

Regina reunion with some of the missionaries I served with there! It is really funny becuase Sister Gatten and I were companions in Regina and Sister Peacock and Sister Blaine were also companions there.. and now they are companions again and so are we!

We all matched!!